Tags // Design Thinking

“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”

I was looking for this story for a while. Finally I found it, so would like to share it with you. It’s about understanding what people want to get done with products—the job-to-be-done. Often we get lost in the features and functions of the product that we forget about the job that the product is designed to get done. The same principle can be used for designing websites and intranets.

“With few exceptions, every job people need or want to do has a social, a functional, and an emotional dimension. If marketers understand each of these dimensions, then they can design a product that’s precisely targeted to the job. In other words, the job, not the customer, is the fundamental unit of analysis for a marketer who hopes to develop products that customers will buy.”

Better User Experience With Storytelling – Part One

A good read on how storytelling can unite the different aspects of the user experience such as brining different perspectives together, defining the goal or defining the user (personas). However, there is another benefit that the article briefly touches upon and that is defining the journey (scenarios). It’s one thing to define a user, but a whole different perspective when you chart out the journey of this user accomplishing goals and tasks.

Systems Thinking: A Product Is More Than the Product

A good read by Donald Norman on the need to look at the systems view when it comes to designing products—“A product is actually a service. Although the designer, manufacturer, distributer, and seller may think it is a product, to the buyer, it offers a valuable service.”

MIT Sloan: Design Thinking Special Report

This report was out in July. It has articles by prominent personalities from Donald Norman to Edward Tufte.

"Design thinking — distinct from analytical thinking — has emerged as the premier organizational path not only to breakthrough innovation but, surprisingly, to high-performance collaboration, as well. “It’s not about the pretty,” says one design-thinking practitioner, “it’s about the productive.” In this special section of articles, interviews, illustrated cases and research findings, the Review explores how to put design thinking to work."

Strategy by Design

The entire Masters of Design issue of FastCompany is now online. This article, Strategy by Design, by the head of IDEO is a real gem. His five point plan for design thinking can be applied to any kind of work. Here they are: